Father Payne eBook

words like loyalty into pretending that I am going
to stagger along carrying the whole of my past.
No, my boy,” said Father Payne, turning to Barthrop,
“you go to Oxford, and enjoy yourself!
But the old place is too tight about my heart for
me to put my nose into it. I’m a free man,
and I am not going to be in bondage to my old fancies.
You may give my love to Corpus and to Wadham Garden—­it’s
all dreadfully bewitching—­but I’m
not going to run the risk of falling in love with
the phantom of the past—­that’s La
Belle Dame Sans Merci for me, and I’m riding
on—­I’m riding on. I won’t
have the hussy on my horse.

“I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day
long,
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery’s
song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna dew.
And sure in language strange she said,
‘I love
thee true,’”

He stopped a moment, as he often did when he made
a quotation, overcome with feeling. Then he smiled,
and added half to himself, “No; I should say,
as Dr. Johnson said to the lady in Fleet Street; ’No,
no; it won’t do, my girl!’”

LXVI

OF DISCIPLINE

“Well, anyhow,” said Vincent at dinner,
commenting on something that had been said, “you
may not get anything else out of a disagreeable affair
like that, but you get a sort of discipline.”

“Come, hold on,” said Father Payne; “that
won’t do, you know! Discipline, in my belief,
is in itself a bad thing, unless you not only get something
out of it, but, what is more, know what you get out
of it. You can’t discipline anyone, unless
he desires it! Discipline means the repressing
of something—­you must be quite sure that
it is worth repressing.”

“What I mean,” said Vincent, “is
that it makes you tougher and harder.”

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but that
is not a good thing in itself, unless there is something
soft and weak in you. Discipline may easily knock
the good things out of you. There’s a general
kind of belief that, because the world is a rough
place, where you may get tumbles and shocks without
any fault of your own, therefore it is as well to
have something rough about you. I don’t
believe in that. The reason why a man gets roughly
handled, in nine cases out of ten, is not because
he is obnoxious or offensive, but because other people
are harsh and indifferent. I want to apply discipline
to the brutal, not to brutalise the sensitive.
If discipline simply made people brave and patient,
it would be different, but it often makes them callous
and unpleasant.”